Science of Shopping: Cameras & Software That Track Our Shopping Behavior

  
 
August 1, 2011
Next time you go to a store, take a minute to look at all the things that are trying to grab your attention. With so many products available and so many stores and websites, how do you decide what to buy and where to shop? Whether it's convenience, good service or finding the best deals, store owners want to know what attracts you to their stores, and what it takes to keep you coming back. Turns out, there's a science to all this.

Economist Andrew Sweeting
at Duke University is researching
the science and complexities of perishable
 goods markets, meaning markets for
 products with expiration dates,
which includes tickets because they
 have to be used by a certain date.
The overall aim of the research is to
 understand how sellers behave and how
 markets of these kinds of goods should be
 designed. LEARN MORE IN THIS VIDEO

(Credit: Science Nation, National Science Foundation):

With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), computer scientists Rajeev Sharma, Satish Mummareddy and their colleagues have developed software that breaks down shopping behavior much like websites do. Sharma's company, VideoMining, uses overhead cameras to put together a top down view of how people shop and what they buy.          


"Basically, what VideoMining does is use software along with cameras mounted on the ceiling of stores to track shoppers as they move around the store and create data that helps us understand how shoppers are shopping," explains Sharma. The software creates maps of a store's traffic patterns by digitally analyzing the video. Using the traffic data, VideoMining creates charts and graphs showing well travelled areas in a store and dead spots-–places people ignore. The software also can tabulate how long shoppers take before that "moment of truth" when they select an item to purchase. Cameras are positioned directly above and picture resolution is intentionally set low so all shoppers remain anonymous.

"You cannot identify individual shoppers," says Sharma. "The computer is actually watching the video and generating numbers that represent [each] shopper's behavior. It's all about capturing human behavior so you can really understand it over a long period of time."

The idea is to show retailers and manufacturers the best areas in the store to place products, and how to create a comfortable place for people to shop. "By providing the data to retailers and manufacturers," says Sharma, "they can customize and design the stores and the shelves and the products to match the shoppers' interest."

Sharma identifies trends. For example, people prefer wider aisles when they shop. Women take a lot longer to shop than men, and, except in a few cases, brand loyalty is not always strong. "What we're finding in some categories, people are going to the store and making up their mind right there. You can see people coming in, going between brands and picking up the product based upon price; based upon other attributes."

The software was initially created to monitor the elderly and disabled in their homes. Now it's keeping an eye on shoppers, giving businesses a scientific leg up in the rat race of figuring out how to best serve their customers and keep them coming back.

According to a Cornell University
 professor of psychology, consumers
 found that satisfaction with "experiential
 purchases"--from massages to family
 vacations--starts high and increases ove
r time. In contrast, spending money on
material things feels good at first, but
actually makes people less happy in
the end.

Miles O'Brien, Science Nation Correspondent
Ann Kellan, Science Nation Producer



Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. Some consumers chronically spend more than they would like, and some consumers chronically spend less than they would like. Read more in this news release:



Every year about this time, on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that traditionally begins the holiday shopping season, early-morning consumers stand in long lines eager to purchase some sought after prize. From the outside, it looks as if these holiday shoppers can't wait to plunk down their cash, but University of Michigan Marketing Professor Scott Rick says consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave.


"Some consumers chronically spend more than they would like, and some consumers chronically spend less than they would like," he says. Where an individual falls within the range of desiring to spend more or less largely determines whether he or she is a tightwad or a spendthrift, characteristics that determine quite a bit about a person's spending habits.

Rick says anticipating the psychological pain that goes along with paying money drives some people to spend less than they would like, while not experiencing enough pain causes others to spend more.

While a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, he and a group of colleagues developed and validated a "Spendthrift-Tightwad" scale to measure stable differences in the level of pain that come from spending decisions. He and his colleagues have since been able to observe the expected patterns of pain in the brains of tightwads and spendthrifts in fMRI experiments involving shopping tasks.

It turns out differences between tightwads and spendthrifts are greatest in situations that amplify the pain of paying. For example, paying for an item with cash amplifies purchase pain. In these cases, tightwads spend substantially less.

But differences are smallest in situations that diminish the pain of paying such as those associated with spending money on others for gifts during the holidays. This is especially true when paying with credit cards because consumers don't immediately feel the pain associated with buying decisions.

"Tightwads and spendthrifts spend about the same amount of money on gifts," said Rick, an expert on the emotional causes and consequences of spending money. "It may be that spending money on someone else lessens the pain of making purchases. Alternatively, spending on gifts may be just as painful as usual for tightwads, but the necessity of buying gifts overwhelms the influence of that pain on spending decisions."

In a webcast sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Rick discussed spending decisions during the holidays when the pressure to buy gifts and take advantage of low prices increases. Rick is now an assistant professor of Marketing at University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. His pre-doctoral research fellowship was funded by NSF.

"The pain of paying matters most when purchases are optional," Rick said during the webcast. "Generally, gifts for loved ones are not optional, assuming we want to maintain those relationships. If grandma wants the new Obama Chia Pet, it may not matter how distressing we find the prospect of buying that tacky, over-priced tchotchke. Grandma wants it, so it goes in the cart."

But in other buying categories, differences remain sizable. Spendthrifts spend significantly more on coffee, clothes and entertainment. When paying for restaurants and hobbies, spending trends level out again.

Rick says how a spending decision is framed has a big impact on how much tightwads and spendthrifts are willing to pay. If dinner and a movie are framed as an investment in a relationship, for example, then tightwads are willing to spend more.

He says these findings are important for economic models of decision making that traditionally assume people make spending decisions based on a purely cognitive appreciation of what they forego in the future by spending today.

Rick's research has been published in marketing, economics, psychology and neuroscience journals, including the Journal of Marketing Research, the Annual Review of Psychology and Neuron.

-NSF-